Decision support systems facilitate the decision making process for most
effective outcome in the many areas including healthcare, business, planning,
defence, and so on. We spend a large section of our resources in knowledge
acquisition, knowledge representation and knowledge processing for making
intelligent decisions. Intelligent reasoning techniques can offer (tremendous)
advantages in making optimised decisions.

The book is aimed toward clarifying first the very concept of innovation as for
what it really means today in a continuously changing set up where technologies
require a continuous effort in learning and coping with constant instability
and uncertainty. Reflections upon continuously changing conditions on cognitive
abilities will also be explored and notions such as "amplification brought in
by new technologies" as well as "simplified models of reasoning triggering
oversimplistic reasoning patterns" will also be carefully analised.

Specific attention will be paid as to redefine the meaning of the same title:
the very same concept of support in making decisions needs in fact to be fully
reconsidered in the light of a few cases examined. The fundamental role of
complex reasoning performed by human decision makers in need to grasp most
relevant information fast and accurately will also be illustrated.

The proposals in all relevant topics are invited.

This book will contain chapters, which are based on the theory and successful
applications of decision support systems including but not limited to:

* An introduction to decision support systems
* Decision support systems in health care
* Decision support systems in telemedicine
* Decision support systems in traffic control
* Decision support systems in defence
* Decision support systems in business
* Decision support systems in education
* Decision support systems in aerospace applications
The main idea is not necessarily to cover all of these areas but rather to
indicate and discuss how some of the applications illustrated may be
reconfigured and made better in the light of results achieved and cased
analysed.

The message is learning by observing some limits and failures and consequently
try coping with that in most constructive ways so that new scenarios may be
opened up.

Please give special attention to problems such as continuous change or the so
called innovation affecting performance and undermining sense of individual
responsibility and motivation.

Questions such as how does the individual decision maker or team react to
packaged and prepackaged advice and does he/she feel really responsible and in
control should be also addressed.
And who controls what as well as what controls whom questions should be raised.

Questions : what is really "innovation"?
How about when in order to be innovative we loose previous skills which were
very important as well as previous knowledge?

What is "support" and how may an information system really be of support to a
human decision maker?

What is really most important to those making decisions in various fields
today?

And what is finally "decision making" today in the interconnected world of
information workload?

Who really decides what and which models of reasoning are becoming predominant
indeed?

It is planned to include some risks and failures based on specific cases
analysis. We will also provide some evidence as for what should be avoided and
which are the essential components which should never be left out of any
decision making process.

Could you please consider writing one chapter for our book?

Please feel free to take co-authors.

Approximate number of pages in each chapter - 30

Publication date - 2002.

Important Dates

4 March 2002
Authors are invited to submit summary (one page) of their proposed chapters as
well as their brief resume (CV).

24 March 2002
Acceptance decision.

30 June 2002
Draft chapter due

30 July 2001
Feedback to the authors

30 August 2002
Camera ready chapter due

We will be pleased to offer one copy of this book to the first named author/or
the corresponding author to express our appreciation.